Summary

It is snowing today with 6-15 inches expected to fall on the mountains. Highs are only in the 20’s. Wind gusts up to 60 mph this morning should weaken a bit this afternoon. We have a break Tuesday and Wednesday but it stays cold. Then Wednesday night a multi-day storm moves in. We will have several waves of precip moving in through Saturday. Snow will fall lightly and heavily at times over the 3 days period. By Sunday morning we could have 1-3 feet at lake level and 2-4 feet on the mountains. It looks like we will get a break behind the storm on Sunday into the beginning of next week. It looks like the next storm could move in around Wednesday the 7th.

Short Term Forecast

The snow moved in early this morning as expected and it is falling heavily across the Tahoe basin today. It hit hard early this morning NW of the lake and has now pushed South as well. Snowing heavily down the entire length of the mountains right now.

You can see that this front is tracking down a bit west of the last storm pulling in some decent moisture off the ocean in that band associated with the front.

A few ski resorts on the North side of the lake reported 1-2 inches at 6 a.m. as the storm was starting. But as you can see on the web cam at Sugar Bowl at 9 a.m. it has been piling up fast all morning.

Overall the storm is doing what we expected. I had a high end forecast of 15 inches for the mountains along the crest. We will have to see if this storm over performs as well.

We have a break with cold air in place Tuesday into Wednesday. The winds will start to pick up again on Wednesday ahead of the next storm. We could have lift issues by Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday evening the leading edge of the precip with the next strom is moving in.

Not much change to the forecast for this storm. We have low pressure setting up off the Pacific NW coast pushing in cold air and several waves of precip that will bring varying intensities of snowfall Wednesday night through Saturday, and tapering off by Saturday night. The first 72 hour storm in a while, and the first multi-foot storm with snow to lake level all season.

The latests 12z GFS run has pulled back on total precip to around 2.9 inches of liquid along the crest. It was an inch wetter on the previous run. This is going to happen as we get closer, the models will fluctuate wit the total precip amounts.

The heaviest snowfall could be Thursday, Thursday night into Friday morning, and Friday night into Saturday morning. The models show plenty of cold air moving in with these waves with higher snow ratios behind the front, so we should get plenty of fluffing of the totals from the heavy precip.

Here is the updated forecast. Not much change, just a little bump from yesterday with the models showing some colder air and higher snow ratios. I would still leans towards the low end for now of 2-4 feet on the mountains.

Extended Forecast

We should finally clear out Sunday into the beginning of next week. The models have been showing another storm approaching for next Wednesday. The GFS is back and forth on whether or not this storm moves into CA or to the North. The GFS ensemble mean runs have the trough a bit too far off the coast by the end of next week with a ridge over the West. That is something I mentioned was possible last week. That could be why the operational runs are struggling next week with the storm tracks.

The European ensembles are still closer to the coast keeping the storm door open into the 2nd week of March.

The GFS does push the trough back in by mid-month. The European deterministic runs still show the storm next Wednesday stalling off the coast before moving in by the end of the week. So not a lot of confidence in the forecast next week and the timing of the next storm. But it does look like we should see a storm by the end of next week.

If we do get a break for several days next week, I do expect the pattern to remain progressive into March so we should see more storms going through the 2nd week of March.

Stay tuned…BA

Update

Here are the storm total reports. Most resorts hit the forecast range. A few NW of the lake came in over the forecast after getting hit pretty hard yesterday morning. NE of the lake got hit pretty good last night when the flow turned out of the East.

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